


Boy

by HardingHightown



Series: Bad Hat (Alyssa Fields & R.J MacCready) [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 13:39:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5293172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sanctuary is home, except when it isn't. Alyssa is trying to build on crumbling foundations.</p>
<p>A short one-shot that may grow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boy

Sometimes she would sit and play the holotape over again. She would listen out for the soft sound of Shaun in the background, and try to hold on to the idea of Nate’s face, how his smile was lopsided, how deep his laughter lines went, how he’d aged from having Shaun, but looked like a boy when he held him.

She sits listening in their old bedroom, imagining he is in the next room.

Outside, she can hear MacCready and Preston talking by the farm.

She wouldn’t have brought him here, had she known how things would work out. But she didn’t. She couldn’t have. He was so different to the memory of this place, so utterly alien to anything this place represented back before the war. Sanctuary Hills was new, shiny and full of possibilities, a pre-fab, out of the box dream for people wanting a fresh new start. It was a new life away from the past, and now it was the past that wouldn’t let her be.

The tape clicks as it ends. She rewinds it.

*

When Nate had proposed, there had been talk. Questions as to why he would do it. Questions about how long he had known her before they started courting (longer than she’d admit), and how quickly he had bedded her after getting her released from Turtledove (not until she asked him to). Questions about her age and motivations, her race.

But there are different types of love. Different reasons to marry. There is the flush of young love, all passion and light-headed joy, wanting a dream that will last forever. There’s years of shared experience that ties people and families together so tight that union is inevitable. And then there’s the feeling of trust that comes from somebody willing to give up their reputation, their position. There’s the feeling of seeing yourself reflected in the eyes of somebody who thinks you are truly incredible, who respects you, aids you, and wants you to be the very best version of yourself.

Nate told her she was beautiful every day they were married.

She runs her hands over the burns on her face and neck.

*

That night a storm hits suddenly, and people rush for shelter. That night, for the first night, she is faced with MacCready in her home.

“It’s a nice place. Clean.”  


He stands in the nursery, his hands resting on Shaun’s crib. She should tell him, she knows she should, but before she can she sees his eyes mist as he grips the wood.

“It never gets easier being away from them, does it?”  


She thinks of Shaun’s blue eyes as she reaches out to hold his hand.

*

She is grateful it is not the same bed, at least.

He is not a skilled lover in times like this, but it’s not about that when he’s shaking and wrapped around her, head buried in her neck as he breathes shakily and she strokes his hair. She knows what he needs. She needed it from Nate in this very room. Scared she’d be sent back. Scared she’d lose it all. Holding on to the person who made her safe. Getting as close to them as she could.

She thinks of what she was like when she was his age. Fresh out of her degree with the world stretched out before her. A child, in almost all respects, leaving her family home for the first time. He has told her of his life before and she cannot imagine it. He was never a child at all.

*

The next morning she wakes before him, for once. She slips away, into the kitchen. She picks up a coffee cup, walks to the place where the coffee maker used to sit.

She plays the tape.


End file.
